The Examined Life

Victor Strecher - Who am I?

• Kenneth Primrose • Season 4 • Episode 1

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Living With Purpose: Insights from Victor Strecher

In this episode of The Examined Life Podcast, host Kenny Primrose explores the profound questions of life's purpose and values with Professor Victor Strecher, a leading expert in the field from the University of Michigan. Strecher shares his deeply personal journey following the tragic death of his daughter, which led him to a renewed focus on what matters most in life. The conversation delves into how reflecting on death and one's core values can lead to a more purposeful and fulfilling life. Strecher also discusses the scientific and physiological benefits of having a strong sense of purpose, the distinction between self-transcending and self-aggrandizing purposes, and practical steps for individuals seeking to discover their own purpose. The episode touches on themes of identity, motivation, and the human condition, offering listeners profound insights and practical advice for living a more examined life.

00:00 Introduction: What Matters Most

00:34 Welcome to The Examined Life Podcast

00:44 Exploring Victor Strecher's 'Life On Purpose'

01:40 A Conversation with Professor Victor Strecher

03:35 The Big Question: Who Am I?

05:09 The Root System of Our Lives

08:09 A Personal Story of Loss and Purpose

14:15 The Mystical Experience and Its Impact

21:32 The Role of Death in Understanding Life

24:59 Exploring the Neuroscience of Purpose

25:26 The Role of Core Values in Purpose

26:16 Purpose and the Brain's Fear Center

26:53 Building the Brain's Purpose Muscle

28:08 Types of Purpose: Self-Transcending vs. Self-Aggrandizing

28:57 Historical Perspectives on Purpose

31:52 The Metaphor of the Camel, Lion, and Child

35:05 The Crisis of Meaning and Purpose

41:51 Practical Steps to Discovering Your Purpose

47:39 Final Thoughts and Reflections


Links:

Substack - https://thisexaminedlife.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

Examined Life Website - www.examined-life.com

Victor Strecher - https://sph.umich.edu/faculty-profiles/strecher-victor.html

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Victor Strecher:

What are the things that matter most to me? What are the things that I value? And also, what are the things I don't really value that don't matter the most to me? Once you start making that delineation, you're able to make decisions about how to spend this brief period of time. We're on this planet. And Julia taught me that. You know, she lived 19 years, but she lived 19 big years. She taught me to live every day as if it may be my last day. Marcus Aurelius once said, Don't live your life as if you're going to live 10,000 years. You know, I mean, death is life's change agent. It's a really important component to life. And so it helps you focus on who am I, what matters most to me, and how do I devote my energy, this very important resource that we have, our energy and vitality toward those purposes that we have in these different domains that we have in our lives.

Kenny Primrose:

Welcome to the Examined Life podcast with me, Kenny Primrose. This is a podcast where we explore big questions with big thinkers over the course of a conversation. I'd like to begin by reading you the blurb in the inside jacket of Victor Strecker's book, Life on Purpose. Imagine a drug that was proven to add years to your life, to reduce risk of heart attacks and strokes, to cut your risk of Alzheimer's disease in half and help you relax during the day and sleep well at night. It would double your chances of staying drug and alcohol-free after treatment. Activate natural killer cells, diminish your inflammatory cells, increase good cholesterol, and repair your chromosomes. The inventors of this drug, we truly receive the Nobel Prize and have institutes named after them. But it's not a drug, it's purpose. And it's free. This is what's written in the inside jacket of Victor Strecker's book, Life on Purpose: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with Professor Victor Strecker, where we discussed what death can teach us about values, about purpose, about living the best life we can in the time that we have. Victor Strecker is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. He is a world leader, speaker, innovator, and author writing in the fields of purpose and well-being. I found our conversation penetrating, honest, practically helpful, and absolutely fascinating, as I hope it will too. I had originally intended to release this in a few months and was really looking forward to it. It would go with the upcoming season. However, it's January, and it's a time of kind of mythical renewal where we try to get alives or we intend to get alives better aligned to our values. Better aligned to a sense of practice. And so it feels appropriate to share this with you now. I've also recently experienced a loss that has pulled focus on values and purpose and meaning and so on. And in our conversation, as you'll hear today, we dive deep into what death can teach us about life. And so for me personally, it feels like an appropriate time to be sharing this episode. I do hope you enjoy listening to it. If you do, then sign up for the newsletter if you haven't yet on SubSnack, this examined life, where you can receive updates and you can also support the podcast practically through the SubSnack channel. As I say, I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I enjoyed the conversation. I think there's a huge amount, and it is worth sitting with a pen and notebook and taking some notes on it. Victor Shreker, thank you so much for agreeing to join me on the Examed Life for a conversation. It's an absolute privilege and joy to be speaking to you. I wonder if we could begin with the big question that I begin all these podcasts with. And that is what is the question that you think we should be asking ourselves?

Victor Strecher:

Yeah. Um well, first of all, I would want to thank you for having me on this podcast. I think it's a real privilege, and I'm very grateful that you showed interest in me, in my book, in our research that we do here around finding purpose. Um, I guess if there's one question I would ask, it sounds so silly in a way, maybe woo-woo, but who am I? Who am I as a human being? Um and as you start diving more deeply into that, by the way, it's often used that that term, who am I, is often used as a mantra in meditation. So um what you're starting to ask is, what do I care about? What matters most? What are the things important in my life? Um and those are the things that may give me direction. So 2,000 years ago, Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, who was also essentially a life coach, was talking to Luke uh uh, oh, I can't remember his name, Lucinius. And uh Lucinius was, you know, kind of asking him for advice. And he said, Lucinius, it doesn't matter how much wind is in your sails if you don't have a harbor. You need to have a harbor, you need a direction, um, you need to know who you are. And as a behavioral scientist in a school of public health and a school of medicine, I'm used to helping people and in trying to quote motivate people to change their lives, whether it's to get a COVID vaccination or get a mammogram or quit smoking or stop that heroin addiction you're on, or you know, you can name a hundred of these different behaviors that really in the long term might be really good for our health. We try to convince people to engage in those. And we usually do it by scaring people. We usually do it by threatening people, right? If you don't get that COVID shot, you could die. If you don't quit smoking, you'll die. Look at your, you know, what'll happen to you. And we put those horrible pictures on cigarette ads and things trying to scare people. But very often I I discovered one of the reasons people smoke is to reduce stress. And what are you doing? You're stressing them, right? So I I thought, and actually it was from a a British colleague of mine, Robert West, who is at the University of London. He and I were in a train and we're going up to Glasgow for a smoking conference. This is many years ago, but he said, I wonder if we started thinking more about people's identities. And I thought, but how do you do that? How do you get to identity, who they are? And I guess I've spent the last 15 years of my career trying to get to just that and discover that root system of our lives. You know, if our behaviors are kind of the branches and our emotions are the branches, and maybe the trunk is the strengths that we might have, you know, who are we like when we're at our best? But what is that root system of core values and purpose? And maybe even more importantly, what is that reservoir that feeds that root system? Is it our family? Is it our community? Is it our religion if we have one? Unfortunately, now increasingly it's social media, it's influencers, it's lots of people that feed those core values. But I'm so interested in how to help a person with this very fundamental question of who we are, who am I?

Kenny Primrose:

It's a wonderful question. It brings to mind, I think it was Plotinus who said, and we who are we? So I suppose that's that's perhaps a bit more about what it means to be human, but who am I as I guess downstream of that. As you've reflected on this question yourself, how is it how has it landed with you? How's that question worked itself out in your own life?

Victor Strecher:

Well, I I guess one major part of my story as a behavioral scientist, I was helping people at what I considered even myself to be a super at a superficial level, whether it's, you know, just trying to inform people or then maybe, you know, give people fear messages, and and hopefully moving more toward more positive messages, but still not digging deeply into this idea of identity. Um 15 years ago, our 19-year-old daughter died very suddenly, and she was born healthy, she caught a chicken pox virus when I was on sabbatical in the Netherlands when she was six months old, and it attacked her heart and actually destroyed her heart. And um as a result, she needed a heart transplant, and she became one of the early children to receive a heart transplant. And when that happened, my life changed. What changed more was when she was 19 years old and she was in nursing school, uh, she passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly. And I found myself about two miles out into Lake Michigan, and Lake Michigan is one of our great lakes here in the U.S. And it's 87 miles wide where I live. We have a cottage in northern Michigan, and I found myself two miles out at 5 15 a.m. in the morning, thinking about continuing on to Wisconsin, which is the other side, the state on the other side of Lake Michigan, and that was 84 more miles. And of course I never would have made it, and I knew that, but it was so beautiful and smooth and quiet and dark and cold. It was spring, very cold, and if I had fallen in, of course, I would have died immediately. But I the sun came up, and I I don't know how to explain this other than my daughter seemed to be inside of me and talking to me. And my daughter said, You need to get over this. And it wasn't like you you should get over this, it was more you need to get over yourself, over your grief, over your ego, um, or you'll die. And you have a choice. And and and that was shocking to me at this very moment, two miles out, this crossroads in my life, life or death, and I actually had a choice to live or die. And I had this difficult decision to make because I had nothing to live for at that point in my mind, until I turned around and came back, or I wouldn't be talking to you, of course, Kenneth, but I I sat down and I don't know how to explain this other than I was looking down on myself from the top of the ceiling. Um, from the ceiling of the my kitchen, I looked down on myself and said, Vic, you're in deep trouble, deep, deep trouble, and you have to fix yourself. No one else can fix you. And you're a behavioral scientist, so if you're worth your salt, you should be able to fix yourself. And I thought about it and I almost turned up to the ceiling and said, What do I do? And I just instinctively got a piece of paper and a pen, and I started writing down the things that mattered most to me. And the thing that mattered most was my family, so I wrote Jerry, my wife, Rachel, our older daughter. And then I started thinking, what matters at work? And the next thing I wrote were my students, because I could have written my research, I could have written my colleagues, and they're all important. But number one was my students. And as soon as I wrote that down, I circled it and thought, wow, the university has given the University of Michigan, where I'm a professor, gave me as much time as I need to recover from this. Not that you ever really recover, but it was such a blessing, and I'm eternally grateful to for giving me that time to go through this existential process of figuring out what do I do now with my life. And so I circled students and I called the university that morning and said, It's been so nice that you've given me the time I need. And it had been a month since she had passed, since Julia died. But I said, that's not the advice I need now. I need to teach as soon as possible, and I want to teach every one of my students as if they're my own daughter. And that completely changed my life, Kenneth. Um, completely. I drove back down to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was a teacher. I started just teaching, and I started looking out at my class, and without saying it out loud, I just said to myself, You're all my daughter. Every one of you is Julia. And it completely changed how I teach. And suddenly I started having moving from tens of students to hundreds of students because students wanted to take my class. And suddenly there were people waiting in my office hours where there were 15 people waiting in line. My dean at our school used to just joke about it, say, I always know where Vic's office is because there are 15 students waiting to see him. And I would take time to visit every one of them and often invite them to our home where my wife would make pancakes, and we and I started living a much bigger life as a result. Um I was nominated to become the professor of the year, which is very nice honor. But, you know, and all of that was nice, but I just felt all I'm doing is treating my students as I should be treating them. I'm caring about what I care about, as philosophers like to say. And I I just simply started caring about the things that mattered. And I stopped caring about the things that didn't matter. I didn't care about what Kim Cardassian was wearing or whether our sports team won or lost. I just didn't. It didn't matter to me. I cared about the things to me that mattered the most. And that completely changed how I acted. And then I started doing research in this space.

Kenny Primrose:

It's incredibly moving to hear it. It was really moving to read bits of it in your book as well. I can't help but thinking there's a really kind of mystical side to this. I wonder what you make of that as a as a scientist. Like where where did this experience come from? What are its origins? And you know, it it kind of transformed you. William James speaks about religious experience, which which take you from a state of kind of anhedonia or listlessness to to one of fulfillment and purpose. And that's kind of what happened to you. So how do you make sense of that?

Victor Strecher:

I don't I don't know how to make sense of it any more than I understand quantum mechanics or why relativity exists. Um you know, I d these are things that I don't know if we even have the instrumentation to understand. So uh I don't spend too much time trying to think about it, but I certainly know how I felt when the sun came up and suddenly everything around me was sparkling, and of course that was just refraction of photons, and I get that. But at the same time, feeling her so deeply inside me. Um, and it turned out to be Father's Day, our our Father's Day, US. And it and I didn't, you know, I'd woken up, I was by myself. My wife, who is a gardener and a sculptor, was still in Ann Arbor, you know, 300 miles south, gardening and sculpting. I had been up north in this cabin on Lake Michigan for about a month by myself. And I had just, I don't know, it was a mystical experience. In fact, the day before, somebody had sent me, people were worried about me. So they were sending me Victor Frankel's book, Mansurch for Meaning. They're sending me uh, but somebody sent me uh a set of Rumi's poetry. Rumi is this amazing poet from I think the 12th century or so. And there's a a particular poem inside. In fact, I I may I I have my graphic novel here. I'll I'll just if it's okay, I'd love to read it to you. I read it the evening before I woke up, and it this this whole chapter starts with you know, a chapter called The Dream. But this is Rumi's poem uh from the 13th century. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. That night before I woke up, just before I woke up, I had this dream that I was rollerblading with Julia, my daughter, and she was very young at the time. She was just uh about nine years old or less. And we were rollerblading through this medieval town, and I don't know, but it was a European medieval town. And suddenly on a hill, there was a beautiful um building that was marble and glowing and it was white. It looked like it could have been a church or a mosque or a synagogue or many other religious places, but all I knew is special. And Julia said, We need to go there as we're rollerblading. I said, Okay. So we rollerbladed there. As soon as we got in, there was a steep, steep spiral staircase that went down. She said, We we need to go. And I said, We can't. We're in rollerblades. And she said, We can. And we started floating down. And then there was this huge room, and Julia and I were there, and three beautiful women in the same kind of dress, all three came up to us. And suddenly I turned, and my daughter was suddenly 19 years old. She had exactly the same dress that these women had. And I get, and she turned turned to me and said, It's time to go. And they disappeared. That's when I woke up. My bed was soaked in tears, and I looked out, and that's when I saw Lake Michigan, and it was perfectly still. And I hopped in my kayak. Um, but I remembered Rumi's poem because I wanted to go right back to sleep. Um, saying, I can, it was such a it was one of these hyper-vivid dreams. And I thought, I can find you, Julie. I want to go on your side. I want to be there with you. I'll do anything to do that. And and then I remembered Rumi's poem that said, you know, these two worlds are right there. Don't go back to sleep. And I stayed awake, and that changed my life. So I don't, you know, gosh, as a scientist, how do you interpret that other than saying there is something much bigger than what we understand in this world?

Kenny Primrose:

Thank you so much for sharing that, Vic. It's very affecting. Hearing you tell the story and the way it clearly affects you, an incredibly profound experience, which leaves you, I suppose, with some epistemic humility at how little we understand the universe, how strange things really are. Ums those reductionist explanations of the universe out into the long grass.

Victor Strecher:

Quantum entanglement. How do we explain that? Physicists can't explain it at all. How you know two fonts can essentially be communicating when they are on the opposite sides of the universe. How do they do that? That no one can figure that one out. Uh that we don't get a lot of reality. So, in a sense, it's platonic. You know, we're still, you know, our backs are or we're watching our own shadows with when backs is a campfire and we just watch our shadows, but we cannot see real reality. And I believe as a scientist, it's still my job to try to see that, to try to quantify the unquantifiable, something like having a purpose in my life.

Kenny Primrose:

So let's zoom in on that a little bit, if that's okay, because you said that you had this experience where your daughter Julia is telling you, in a sense, to get over yourself. You've got a choice to make, you've got the the agency here. And where that choice took you was it sounds like like thinking about what you really value, what's core to you. Uh, does that you know get at this question or begin to get at this question of who I am? Like what do I value?

Victor Strecher:

Yes, very, very much. Um so I think a if you if we go back to this root system, I think about these core values that I have. What are the things that matter most to me? What are the things that I value? And also what are the things I don't really value that don't matter the most to me? Um, once you start making that delineation, you're able to make decisions about how to spend this brief period of time. We're on this planet. And Julia taught me that. You know, she lived 19 years, but she lived 19 big years. She taught me to live every day as if it may be my last day. Um Marcus Aurelius once said, don't live your life as if you're going to live 10,000 years. You know, I mean, death is life's change agent. It's a really important component to life. And so it helps you focus on who am I, what matters most to me, and how do I devote my energy, this very important resource that we have, our energy and vitality toward those purposes that we have in these different domains that we have in our lives.

Kenny Primrose:

I love your line there. The death is life's change agent.

Victor Strecher:

So Steve Jobs was giving the commencement address to Stanford, and he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He said, Death is the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent.

Kenny Primrose:

It's a great line. It's a great bit of wisdom. And the the Stoics were were very much into this kind of meditation on death. It seems like, as a culture, we're kind of in denial about our death, our limitations.

Victor Strecher:

In what movie now does the hero actually die? Very few, very few. And most people don't go to see those movies, you know? And and that's unfortunate because I think when you leave a movie, when there is death of someone you started really identifying with, I think you leave that movie with a deeper sense of who you are.

Kenny Primrose:

So can we just parse that out a little more? Is that because death focuses your attention on what's really of value? You're more acutely aware of the shortness of the time that you do have and therefore what it is you want to spend that time valuing.

Victor Strecher:

Yes, I think so. Um, you know, if in in my graphic novel, I bring in the Grim Reaper to my class, and the Grim Reaper says, you know, I the shadow that I bring to life, it it highlights what life really is. It's like when you put a shadow on some, you know, text that you're writing and you say, Oh, yeah, I want that drop shadow. Suddenly the text stands out more. And that's what death does. It provides that background to say, oh, this is life, because that's death, as opposed to this middle point we're always in, or we're in so often when we're just kind of sleepwalking through life.

Kenny Primrose:

So you took these kind of core values, these things that you realized were of huge importance to you after this incident on Lake Michigan, to your family, your job as a teacher, your work with students. This became a really clear purpose for you. The life that you had in front of you. So that's that's how that question worked for you then. Who am I? Well, I and these things I care about. What do I do then? Well, I I work with these things that I care about. They become my purpose.

Victor Strecher:

Yeah, I have research to do too. So I'm a researcher and I I wanted to start exploring what is this, what is the thing that happened to me, and I'd love to understand some of the mechanisms. And of course, I'm biased because it affected me. You know, I used I would always tell my students, don't do research in something you care too much about, that you're, you know, is part of your identity. Well, I've I've completely broken that law. So I'll I'll tell you that up front. At the same time, though, I'm trying to understand mechanisms. So I started working with neuroscientists where we would put people into MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, clamping their heads down, showing them, you know, images of things that, you know, that, you know, that's neither here nor there. These are a bunch of different studies we would do. But one study that's relevant, we'd ask people to think about what mattered most in their lives, their purposeful core values. And there's a part of the brain right up here in the prefrontal cortex called a ventral medial prefrontal cortex that relates to the self, that relates to core values and relates to future orientation. And it started explaining what why purpose, having a strong sense of purpose and connecting with core values seems to matter so much. This part of the brain is very modern, it relates to executive functioning, and it also governs down our amygdala. Our amygdala is this very ancient part of our brain, deep in the heart of our brain. It's two little almond-shaped nodes. And that's our fear center. And our fear center, just think about COVID. When COVID came in, you know, it hijacked our brains for a while, some people's brains. Some people just went out and stripped the shelves bare of hand sanitizer and food and water. But other people said, wow, I'm living next to a person who's 83 years old and living by herself. She must be scared and wondering how she's going to survive. Um, so maybe I'll go over and help her out. You know, there are different people who were led by their ventral medial prefrontal cortex, because that relates to their core values. And there are other people who were hijacked by their amygdala. And I started wondering, I wonder if this part of the brain could be built up like a muscle, you know, where every day, you know, you're working out that muscle by reminding the person of what matters most, maybe even putting their purpose, you know, somewhere where they can't forget to see it. Or, you know, if I turn on my smartphone, I might see, you know, my granddaughter on my smartphone every day. And, you know, so that's my granddaughter, Madeline Julia. So that's special to me. On average, we open our smartphone 65 times a day. So I'm reaffirming who I am, what I'm here on this planet to do, to be a good grandfather, for example. So I think there are ways of working this muscle out more and building more gray matter here so that you're controlling that fear center.

Kenny Primrose:

So I'd love to hear more about this, especially the the neurobiology about. I know you've discovered a raft of physiological benefits and general life benefits from having a strong sense of purpose. I wonder whether there's a distinction between different types of purposes. So, like you could have self-aggrandizing ones or self-transcending ones, and do they have different results?

Victor Strecher:

I think there are two kinds of bad purposes. Um and it's funny because some researchers say a purpose by definition is self-transcending. I don't agree. I think there are all sorts of purposes people can have. Um, and they relate to our core values. And many people have core values around wealth, attractiveness, power, uh, etc. And that's all they have. Well, they can have a purpose around that too, certainly. Um, we have found consistently that those kind of people are more likely to develop depression or be depressed.

Kenny Primrose:

Oh, it's interesting. It brings to mind the psychiatrist who I think you mentioned, Victor Frankel, and he said that, well, meaning was the term he used rather than purpose. But he said that we look for meaning in often places that have an eternal appetite. So, like money, sex, and power, you're never satisfied. You've never had enough. Whereas if you pursue kind of moral goods, spiritual goods, relational goods, creative goods, these are all like an end in themselves. They're inherently satisfying. Would you would you agree with that? Would you say there are uh better and worse purposes that we might pursue, things that resonate more with us?

Victor Strecher:

Absolutely, there are. And in fact, that goes back to Aristotle and Plato, who talked about eudaimonia or eudaimonic well-being, where the root word is daemon. Daemon is in Greek true self or true God. So they believed we were born with this godlike self inside us, essentially like an angel, somebody who would transfer between the God or gods and who we are. And it would help guide us. It was like a life coach inside us, but an angelic life coach. Christianity in the second century, and I don't want to offend anybody, but ancient Christians, you can look it up, altered the meaning of that word from daemon to demon and said, We're born sinful, and we need to get rid of that demon inside of us. Well, that relates to the conflict between paganism and Christianity and all this stuff, and we don't need to get into that, but it's fascinating, isn't it? Imagine being born with this true godlike self in you where you want to maintain that versus you're born sinful, and that needs to somehow be educated or beaten out of you, which it was to me when I went through Sunday school. Uh so that was um that's a fascinating concept, even then and then and there, 2000 years ago, thinking uh 2,400 years ago. Um, there's another way to think about purposes that may not be good. And it came out to me when I was in Heidelberg, Germany, as invited by the city of Heidelberg. This is the best job ever. Would you come out to Heidelberg and help us find a purpose as Heidelberg? And I thought, whoa, so we went to this wonderful forest and this beautiful old, you know, ancient nunnery or something. And somebody raised their hand while I was doing this standard kind of lecture about purpose and said, Well, you know, Hitler had a purpose. And it really stopped me cold in my tracks because you could argue that Hitler or Al-Qaeda or other groups have transcending purpose. They were willing to die for their purpose, literally, blow themselves up for their purpose. So that is not just self-enhancing, it is self-transcending, and yet it's misguided. So that takes you, it took me to Nietzsche. And in the beginning of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a beautiful metaphor of a camel. The camel says, load everything on my back, load all the joys and the sorrows and everything. In other words, fully educate me. And I talked to my students about this because education to become as you're a camel is not just about taking a bunch of courses and learning, you know, organic chemistry. It's about taking gap years and seeing life. Steve Jobs, you know, stopped going to Clark University and trekked around India and learned about life. And so I recommend that people become camels. And then in the metaphor, the camel metamorphosizes into a lion. The lion goes into the wilderness and is attacked by the thou shalt dragon. On every scale, the dragon has the two words, thou shalt. In other words, it's thou shalt do what this religion tells you what to do, or what this community does, or this political affiliation tells you, or your family, or whatever. And the lion destroys the dragon and then metamorphosizes one last time into a child. And Nietzsche says the child is innocent. The child is free of these values, able to construct their own purpose, their own values. And I think that's really interesting. Um, it's really hard. I don't know if I believe that we can all become fully innocent of values because we all live off, you know, the way we were taught and trained from our families, et cetera. We may be living off of that expired credit card, you know, but we're still living off some elements of it. But can we look at ourselves and research ourselves enough to form our own real values that are deep and well educated so that we know how the rest of the world lives and as a as opposed to just being cloistered and within that small cloister, that filter bubble, we build a purpose that may be dangerous. Is that making sense?

Kenny Primrose:

It does. It does make sense very much so. And there's so much to say on that. I I feel influenced by the work of the psychiatrist and philosopher Ian McGilchrist, who thinks that values are kind of woven into the universe, goodness, truth, and beauty are what he calls ontological uh primitives. And he's written a doorstop on this full of you know science and philosophy and history and cultural writing. And um, you know, I suppose part of me, and I'm spiritually inclined, I I have a faith. Wonders if our purpose is actually tapping into that, you know, that song of the universe. You know, much as uh I suppose Christianity has a bit to answer for with the original sin thing, we also image God, and this feels like a you know uh uh something that resonates, I suppose, with this idea of your inner diamond.

Victor Strecher:

Oh, too, by the way. That shifted over time. It's just it was an interesting historical Absolutely super interesting.

Kenny Primrose:

I wonder if uh in in your world um of helping people find purpose and working with students you see the meaning crisis and whether that is also uh a crisis of purpose for you. Um and if so, you know, where does it come from and what's the solution to that? It's a huge question, and I'm aware I I'm aware that we are somewhat limited in time.

Victor Strecher:

Yeah, and you know, in terms of meaning versus purpose, I think there is a distinction. I think meaning implies that there is some sense to the universe, that there is some uh continuity to how we're thinking with other elements of the universe. Being an agnostic, I simply don't know. Uh I'm I'm not saying it doesn't, I think it's almost uh a belief to say I'm uh I'm an atheist. I don't believe. I I simply don't know. So um Albert Camus was somewhat similar. Albert Camus said, I don't know whether God exists or not, but it's really important to have a purpose. And that's how he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus, where the first sentence was, Wow, why don't we all just kill ourselves? You know, and he is writing this when the Nazis were invading Paris. And, you know, he joined the French resistance. Why did he? Because he said, My purpose is France. And that's so cool. He just said, That's my rock. That's what I'm gonna push up every day, even if it rolls back down. It gives me meaning and purpose under the most dangerous of all conditions. I'm going to do that and I will become happy. That is essentially his message in my mind, anyway, how I read it. And I really believe that's the case. I think it is important to have some direction.

Kenny Primrose:

I think of uh, you know, the the Thai cave rescue a number of years ago, where that uh teenage football team was rescued from a cave after a few weeks, and they had an extraordinary coach, just amazing man called I think Brother Eck is how he was known. And he got the boys every day in this routine of like tunnelling up through the through the cave roof. Uh believing that they were going to reach the outside world and be reunited. And this kept them going, this rhythm, this uh purpose they had, uh, and sustained them until they were rescued. And I suppose the the point there is that even a even a purpose that's futile is profoundly useful.

Victor Strecher:

I think so. And you know, so whether we want to establish meaning around the purpose, well, that's fine. I I'm not opposed to any anybody doing that is is fine. But I still think you need some sort of purpose and direction in your life. It's important. When we set a goal, we become more, we persist in that more. We, you know, we're willing to put up with pain. Even as kids, we're trying to swim at at the bottom of the swimming pool all the way and touch the other side of the pool, right? And the first time we try to do that, our lungs are bursting, but we're just seeing that wall, going, I'm gonna do anything. And and we may not even make it, but then we're gonna keep trying and do it again and do it again. And it's it does give us some degree of joy doing that.

Kenny Primrose:

Yeah, having having direction, right? It seems essential to our thriving. And you see it throughout the natural world. You know, everything has a a telos, Aristotle would say, a purpose. It grows towards some end. And I suppose I think of this idea of design or purpose or whatever, and think what what purpose is it that makes us most human. Um and I I guess this goes back to the idea of Hitler having a purpose. Well, he was very inhuman, very inhumane. I think it didn't his purpose didn't enlarge his being. And perhaps there's something there that's hard to put your finger on that some purposes enlarge our being and make us flourish, and others don't.

Victor Strecher:

I think it does, and and I'm glad that you kind of brought that back up again because we should comment on it. Um I I'm a Big follower of Franz Duvall, who recently passed away, but he wrote a great book called The Bonobo and the Atheist. And it was basically his research and many other people's research have found that many animals, from bonobos to whales to dolphins, to elephants, even to rats, exhibit prosocial behavior very naturally. So they'll release another, a rat will release another rat out of a cage, so they share food. You'd think the other rat, you know, the first rat would not release them so that the rat could have all the food. Chocolate chips, by the way, and they love chocolate chips. But no, 90% of the time they release the other rat and they share. And I think that this is, like you said, it's part of the fabric of the universe. It's certainly part of the fabric of evolution. I think this is how we evolve to cooperate, to support, to educate, um, not to constantly, you know, fight or berate. Uh, you know, we've been successful as human beings because we do communicate and we cooperate. And you look at all these cave paintings throughout the world, you see, you know, you might have seen these cave paintings with all these hands put up everywhere. It's kind of like saying, we are together, but you see them all over the world. There is something very fundamental about belonging, about helping other people. Um, you know, it in the ancient days, if a saber-toothed tiger came into a village, the mom might go, you kids, you you go, you run, I'll take care of the saber-toothed tiger. And of course, she would get eaten, but the kids would go off and they would be able to reproduce. So there are many altruistic reasons for surviving. I mean, there are many uh reasons for survival that relate to altruism.

Kenny Primrose:

Yeah, I love that. And I I find the the book Humankind absolutely fascinating, where it looked at those scenarios where there was like, you know, a real life Lord of the Flies scenario, except they cooperated, they kind of thrived.

Victor Strecher:

Exactly, exactly. Which under this veneer, so many people think under the veneer we're absolute horrible animals, and that's just simply not the case.

Kenny Primrose:

Vic, I'm aware that you probably have lessons to teach.

Victor Strecher:

I'm okay for another few minutes, and and I'm really enjoying talking to you, Kenneth.

Kenny Primrose:

Well, thank you. Likewise, Vic. I wonder if I could use the last few minutes we have then to Well, you know, we've talked about this big question, who am I? And uh you've asked yourself it and managed to channel your energies into a sense of purpose that comes from your core values. So I wonder how our listeners perhaps, if they're wondering, well, how do I find my purpose? I don't really know what it is, how might they go about discerning that?

Victor Strecher:

Yeah, well, let's let's start real simply. Let's start with just asking what matters most. When I came back from the lake, Lake Michigan, in my kayak, I just started instinctively writing about the things that mattered most. And it turns out the things weren't things, they were people. So, you know, my family, my students. So those things turned out to be, those people turned out to be very important, circling those and saying, what could I do to make a difference for those people? Um, you may start off literally by looking at your smartphone and what's on your smartphone that you see 65 times a day, maybe. Is it a saying? Is it a quote? Is it a work of art? A work of nature? Is it your granddaughter? Is it your spouse? Is it your dog? Your cat? Is it your plant? Who knows? Who relies on you? Um, what are the things that matter most? So you might start there. You might also go through this headstone test, as we are kind of implying with death, and write out your your headstone, and then on that headstone put your name and say, I died today. What would you want as an epitaph? What would you want people to say about you at your memorial service? Also asking whether you have causes that you care about. You know, people who retire, for example, have a hard time repurposing their lives, but in a way it's not that hard. If you start saying, well, maybe playing golf, you know, because for the last 10 years, all I want to do is just play golf every day, and after five days I realize I stink at golf and my knees are sore. So can you do something beyond just golf and breaking 80 or whatever you're trying to do? Maybe, maybe if you volunteered at places that may matter to you, if you devote yourself or invest in causes, be on a board of some organization, help out kids, teach them to read. There's so many things you could do. Those people end up living longer, and their epigenetic clock, their biological clock is literally longer. We found that recently.

Kenny Primrose:

Yeah, it sounded like you you found an absolute raft of benefits, you know, having Alzheimer's rates and kind of said you said um quite memorably, if you could make this into uh a hill, a pharmaceutical, you'd be a billionaire. One of the things you suggested that I've personally found really helpful, and I used in fact to train some teachers recently, is to hone in a new core values and then come up with a kind of purpose statement. And so you you've got your different domains of purpose to be an engaged husband and father and teacher and so on. I came up with my own one and I found that it's really clarifying. I know what I'm saying yes to and who I am, and also therefore it's easier to know what I'm saying no to. And it also means that that the you know the whole well-being thing, sleep and exercise and so on, which is so important, but it it's it's kind of takes on a new importance when it's helping you serve your purpose. You know, I need to sleep well in order to be an engaged father, husband, friend, teacher, or whatever.

Victor Strecher:

Yeah, exactly. Kenneth, uh, you put it so well. We may have different domains of purpose. Maybe they relate to your to a family or to work or to a community or to others, you know, depending on who you are. But having a spectrum of different um domains of purpose, I think makes a lot of sense to me. It a purpose helps you organize your goals and helps set, okay, here's what I'm gonna spend my time on today, here's what I'm not. It helps you engage strengths that you might have. Today I need to be inspiring. Today I need to be a good listener. Today I may need to be thoughtful, or other days I need to what whatever those things are. So um it helps you when you wake up in the morning, kind of like we always lit. What's the weather gonna be like? Oh, we better put on a raincoat. Well, maybe we ask ourselves, what do I need to be today? And now I'm gonna put that coat on, depending on my best self-characteristics, and try to do our best that day.

Kenny Primrose:

It's a wonderful piece of advice in terms of going out into the world and thinking, well, who who am I and who do I need to be today?

Victor Strecher:

I can't say I always do this. I'm not pretending that I'm really great at this. Um, I'm a very average person who strives to do these things. But I'll turn 70 this year and I feel energized. I'll be, I have to actually run and teach a class, and uh, and I love doing that. I will still treat every student as if they're my own child. I won't tell them that because they'll go, oh, that's creepy. But I think about that. And so that's how I live my life, and and I'm very happy as a result.

Kenny Primrose:

Well, Vic, I think your students are incredibly fortunate to have you as their teacher. I've so appreciated your time and indeed your book. It's been it's been really valuable. So thank you so much.

Victor Strecher:

Kenneth, thank you so much. I I'm lucky to have you um here interviewing me, and I'm very grateful for that.

Kenny Primrose:

I hope you enjoyed listening to this conversation with Victor Strecker. In his book Life and Purpose, he explores many of the themes we have touched on today. I recommend it, it's one I keep returning to. If this episode did resonate with you, then you might like to revisit some of the earlier conversations. One with Bill Damon, where we explore whether the way we're spending our time is reflective of our deeper purpose. And the other with Oliver Berkman, where he explores what it means to more fully inhabit your finitude. Questions of purpose are never really far from my mind, and not just because of the work that I do, but because, as Victor suggests, how we live our lives deeply shapes the quality of our lives and the lives of those around us. It's easy to drift without noticing, and this conversation was a reminder that we don't have to. I've written a short essay to accompany this episode. Reflecting on some of the practices that I engage with when thinking about purpose and values. You'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much to Victor Strekker, to my guest today, for his time and his wisdom, to Moby Gratis for the music you heard in the background, and my brother Colin, who also provided some of the music. I'll be back soon with some more conversations on how we can better examine life.